Help with school lab

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quik1

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Hi all. Im having the weirdest of problems in a CAT lab at a school.
The users cant log in and get the message "domain xxxxxx is not available", but any user with administrative rights can log in.
When i checked the pc`s i found that the NIC led`s are not lit on pc`s in question. Can this be the problem? I checked the cables with a tester and it works. (from the wall bow to the pc - flylead)
How can i check the connection between the wallbox and the switch / hub to see if that is causing the problem?
There are 30 pc`s in the lab, all with xp pro and a server with server 2003.
:confused:
 
I know this is dumb, but I assume that you have checked the switch is actually turned on and working. This I assume because you have tested cables. However, for 30 PC's to lose connectivity would indicate the switch. I recommend rebooting the switch, and then logging in as a admin user to check to see if the PC's actually have network connectivity. Isolate it from the hardware side first. Then check cables, then check OS. All evidence so far points to the switch. Even if it is on, a power surge may have frozen the switch. Reboot it
 
Very much seems like it could be the switch - verify that you have connectivity by pinging once you're logged on. The administrative users could easily be logging onto a local profile.
 
Log in as admin on each pc, and see if the network card has not been disabled. Quite often seen in CAT labs that for some or other reason the network cards get disabled, then I log in as ADMIN and enable it, and bob's your uncle:-) Could also be power settings causing it, when windows turns off the network cards to save power. Go to the network card properties and disable it.
 
graviti said:
I know this is dumb, but I assume that you have checked the switch is actually turned on and working. This I assume because you have tested cables. However, for 30 PC's to lose connectivity would indicate the switch. I recommend rebooting the switch, and then logging in as a admin user to check to see if the PC's actually have network connectivity. Isolate it from the hardware side first. Then check cables, then check OS. All evidence so far points to the switch. Even if it is on, a power surge may have frozen the switch. Reboot it
Click to expand...

Yes i have checked the switch and rebooted it. It also only happens on selected pc`s not all 30. What is really strange is that 1 user will log in on a pc then i let that same user log in on a different pc and he would not be able to.
 
Oh hang on, thought you meant all 30 were not able to do it.

Log in where you can and try pinging the domain controller by its FQDN and also running netdiag and dcdiag.

Sounds like you have a DNS problem.
 
I used to have this type of thing where my above mentioned solution worked. Remember, some profiles will stick on the pc, so if a user has used a profile on a certain pc, it might still remember that person. If a person can log in on a pc, but someone else can't on that same pc, change the person who can log in's password in Active Directory. If he can still log in, you know it's a cached profile. Sometimes I had to use old admin passwords to get onto these pc's...or easier...the local admin profile.
 
@ AntiThesis - Ill try pinging each machine in the morning. I think the wallboxes might also be part of the problem. Its that cheap kind.
@ francoislr - How do you clear the profiles from the pc`s apart from having to delete each user from each pc.
 
It's possible it's hardware but I'm still going to push at DNS problems. If there are any errors in the event viewer of your DNS server that would be a good place to start.

You must be able to resolve your domain controller(s) from the workstations by full name or something is amiss.
 
Those wall boxes get kicked off easily by the kids, quite annoying....but if you did run a tester through all the points, the boxes should be fine...mostly.

About the roaming profiles, I remember looking for a solution, but got so busy I forgot...so always manually did it. You could however try the following link....it's a simple registry edit/key, so could be made easy to deploy. Let me know if it works, then I will make a note of it, and when my colleagues shoot themselves or my boss decides to punish me and send me back to school I will go try it as well:-)
 
We utilise a mandatory roaming profile for the kids, so that they cannot edit it, and then use GPO to ensure that the user profiles are deleted at log off. After that, we also use the user profile hive cleaner from MS to ensure that the profile gets cleared in the registry as well. This sorted out a lot of issues for us. For me the whole problem points at hardware if all the nics are not lighting up. It could be the wall boxes, but the question would be, why did so many fail at once.

DHCP could be timing out, thus not setting up correct DNS etc, DNS could just be plain faulty, or maybe either of the two services could be broken on the server. Check the event logs on suspect machines, and on the server
 
Thanks guys. ill let you know how it turns out.
@francoislr - theres no links in your post.
 
The fact that there are no link lights on the various computers leads me to suspect that either the network card has been disabled, either in the Bios or in Windows. You've already checked the flyleads and the wall boxes, so my feeling is the network card.
 
Asha'man X said:
The fact that there are no link lights on the various computers leads me to suspect that either the network card has been disabled, either in the Bios or in Windows. You've already checked the flyleads and the wall boxes, so my feeling is the network card.
Click to expand...
The nic`s have not been disabled and shows in the device manager as working.
 
Guys! i was pinging the server from the workstations, disabled the power management on the nic`s when the server gave me a BSOD (stop 0x000000a5)
What can i do?
 
OK, so you were pinging the server, and whilst pinging, decided to disable the NIC of a workstations, and a blue screen happened on the server. OK, that is some pretty freaky weirdness if they are actually related. :) OK, I'm fishing here, but, the wokstations that you were pinging with, were they actually resolving and pinging the server. And if not can you try pinging the IP of the server. Not pinging server, but can ping IP narrows drastically down to DNS. However, you've still not given any feedback on the Event Logs. Surely they are not clean
 
Just got back from there now. I pinged the servers ip from the workstations and get a reply. Ping the workstation from the server and get a reply, but still getting a domain xxxxx is unavailable when trying to log in. After i rebooted the server about 10 times it booted to windows - no bsod. Then just as i was about to leave i saw that on the dlink 16 port switch only the power led is flashing and makes this ticking noise. So i guesse thats busted.
 
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